Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent CGTN broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Part of CGTN Radio news bulletin about hurricane “Milton” victims in Florida. Listened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Bake Timmons and Bill Robins for the following tips:
The morning after Hurricane Helene pummeled the eastern seaboard of the US, Thomas Witherspoon inspected the damage to his western North Carolina home. The night before, he listened to the wind whip down trees and snap power lines along the two-mile access road connecting his family to their few neighbors in Buncombe County.
Like the tens of thousands of other North Carolina residents, the power to Witherspoon’s neighborhood was completely out. It was impossible to communicate with the house down the road, let alone anyone several miles away. Unable to send text messages or make phone calls, radio became the one form of communication left in rural North Carolina. After fixing what he could on his own property, Witherspoon, a lifelong amateur radio enthusiast, began distributing handheld radios to his neighbors.
“Amateur radio is one of those things you get into because of your love of radio communications and the technical aspects of it or the community and the challenges that you can overcome,” Witherspoon says. “It’s a lot of fun, but underlying all of that is this prime directive with amateur radio that it’s always there as emergency communications when all else fails.” [Continue reading…]
Asheville, North Carolina — As Florida grapples with the destruction from Hurricane Milton, the people of western North Carolina know that reality all too well. Helene roared through the mountains, leaving more than a million people in the disaster zone without water, power and spotty cell service.
But what they did have was the radio.
For days, WWNC host Mark Starling and producer Tank Spencer were a lifeline, serving as a proxy dispatch service to help coordinate wellness checks and connect the stranded with nearby resources.
“We didn’t have any connection to the outside world except our radio stations, and we were the only two here. So we kind of had a mission of like, OK, well, we’ve got to walk these people through the storm,” Starling said.
The Asheville AM radio station was inundated with phone calls, which meant dealing with the widest range of emotions imaginable. One caller was a man on the second floor of his house with his wife and grandchild, Starling said.
“Our entire basement’s flooded. Our first floor’s flooded up to about four feet and we’re upstairs. We’re safe, but my Ram truck is underwater,” the caller said.
Starling told the man to keep the station’s number handy and hoped everything would be OK.
But as Starling tearfully recalls, “Everything wasn’t fine.”
The caller, his wife and their 7-year-old grandson were all swept away, among the at least 120 people killed by Helene in North Carolina. [Continue reading…]
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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent CGTN broadcast plus Radifax weather maps.
Carlos notes:
Part of CGTN Radio news bulletin about cat 5 hurricane “Milton” approaching Florida. Listened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Click here to view on YouTube.
Plus hurricane “Milton” featured on NOAA’s satellite image and weather charts. Radiofax from Boston USCG radio station, received at Urca Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent CGTN/CRI broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Part of CGTN Radio news bulletin (in English) about hurricane “Milton” approaching Florida. Listened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Fred Waterer, who writes:
On Oct 2 Seth Myers as part of his show (Late Night with Seth Myers) used this prop to “listen to an imaginary Zombie apocalypse broadcast”, complaining how “heavy it was” when he lifted it on to his desk:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares illustrated radio listening report of a recent Radio New Zealand broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Part of RNZ’s news bulletin about bushfires in New Zealand. Listened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who writes:
Dear Thomas,
I am Giuseppe Morlè, IZ0GZW, from Formia, located in central Italy along the Tyrrhenian Sea. I hope everything is going well for you after the hurricane and that you and your loved ones are in good health.
I’m sending you this latest loop antenna of mine, which I’ve named “Delicate” due to its small size—about 20 cm in diameter—and because it fits perfectly with the Malahit receiver inside my car.
I am currently comparing it with a larger loop antenna inside the car to see how they differ. In fact, all of my antennas—whether for VHF/UHF or CB—are installed inside the passenger compartment of my car, and I can assure you, they work very well. Even my antennas for HF listening are mounted inside the vehicle.
I also have a loaded wire antenna hidden under the car, running from one wheel to the other. It works especially well on the 20-meter band, which is my favorite band for listening.
I wanted to share with you and all of the SWLing Post readers my experiences with listening and QRP experiments.
Thanks to you and all the friends at the SWLing Post.
Best regards,
Giuseppe Morlè, IZ0GZW